In a country regarded as the adrenaline-pumped home of adventure sports, one New Zealand company is offering frustrated drivers the chance to squash a car with a tank.

Tanks for Everything in Christchurch has a fleet of eight tanks, armoured personnel carriers and Jeeps, the largest of which can easily crush a family sedan pancake-flat in a crescendo of squealing metal and shattering glass.

The pride of the operation is Maximus, a British-made Centurion battle tank, weighing 52 tonnes , which saw service with Australian forces in Vietnam in the early 1970s.

There’s also a Soviet-era T-55, an incongruous sight in New Zealand’s rolling green hills, which Tanks or Everything’s Matthew Sandland said was surprisingly easy to purchase from an arms dealer in Hungary.

It is the latest artillery round in the battle for the adrenaline dollar in New Zealand’s NZ$3 billion (€2.184 billion) adventure tourism industry.

The island nation has marketed itself as a spiritual home for white-knuckled travellers with rafting, bungee jumping, heli-skiing or ‘zorbing’ – rolling downhill in an inflatable sphere.

“New Zealand is arguably the dominant adrenaline tourism destination,” said Neil Carr, associate professor of Otago University’s tourism school.

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